Ivan Rybkin

Early life

He was born in village of Semigorka, Voronesh Oblast. In 1968, Rybkin graduated from Volgograd Agricultural Institute, and in 1991 from the Soviet Academy of Social Sciences. After a career on lower ranks of the Communist Party, Rybkin was elected as peoples' deputy to the congress of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic in 1990. In 1993, Rybkin became a member of the Agrarian Party of Russia. That very year in December, he was elected deputy of the State Duma.

Speaker of Russian State Duma

In 1994, Rybkin was elected speaker of the State Duma. In January 1995, he became a member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. In July of that year, Rybkin became a leader of the Ivan Rybkin Bloc. In March 1998, Rybkin was appointed Deputy Prime Minister for Commonwealth of Independent States affairs.

Presidential candidate

In 2004, Rybkin was nominated by Berezovsky's Liberal Party for the Russian presidential elections. During the campaign, on 2 February 2004, in his article in the Kommersant and Novaya Gazeta newspapers he accused incumbent President Vladimir Putin of having bombed Moscow in 1999 just to make way for the Chechnya attack, but also to be an oligarch involved in shady business activities with Yury Kovalchuk, Mikhail Kovalchuk, Gennady Timchenko, KiNEx and the Russia Bank, which allegedly swallowed up a vast share of the nation's financial flows. He then accused Putin of having kidnapped him, after having given contradictory informations about what he claimed had happened. These allegations have been dismissed by various newspapers as “not very credible”, nor grounded on any kind of evidence.[1]

The Guardian said that some people characterized Rybkin's claim as “a publicity stunt” [2], while CNN stated that in Russia “the common explanation "he's gone missing" is a euphemism for a man on a prolonged drinking binge or a romantic escapade” [3].

Kidnapping

In February 2004, he disappeared for 4 days under mysterious circumstances. A day after his return he accused the Putin administration of complicity in the 1999 bomb attacks in Moscow that led to a war in the Russian breakaway republic of Chechnya. Five days later, Rybkin appeared in Kiev. He stated later that he had been kidnapped and drugged by Russian FSB agents He claims to have been lured to Ukraine under the pretense of meeting the former Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov. However upon arrival he says he was offered refreshments in the apartment, at which point he became "very drowsy." He says he was unconscious for four days, waking on 10 February. Upon waking he was shown a videotape in which he was performing "revolting acts" conducted by "horrible perverts". He was told that the tape would be made public if he continued with his presidential campaign.[4][5]. According to Alexander Litvinenko, the FSB agents apparently treated Rybkin with their standard truth drug.

He said he feared for his safety if he returned to Russia, and whilst he initially continued the campaign from overseas, on 5 March 2004, he withdrew from the race, saying he did not want to be part of "this farce," as he called the elections.[6]